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State of unforgiveness

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Mordechai Vanunu walks from prison en route to a court hearing in 1998.Picture:Reuters

Mordechai Vanunu may be released from jail next week after 18 years, but he is far from free. By Ed O'Loughlin.

Philip Nolan was a lieutenant in the US army who, court-martialled for a youthful mutiny, publicly damned his country and said he never wished to hear its name again.

As punishment, Nolan was forced to spend the rest of his life at sea, transferred from one US naval vessel to another, never allowed to return home or even hear news of it.

Lieutenant Nolan is a fictional character, the subject of a famous 19th century American short story called The Man Without a Country.

But an oddly similar fate now faces a real-life man without a country: Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, who is due next Wednesday to leave prison after serving every day of an 18-year sentence for treason and espionage.

While Nolan could not return to his home country, the Israeli security establishment has told Vanunu that it will not grant his wish to leave it. It is also forbidding him from communicating with foreigners or moving about without permission. Last week, Vanunu told his brother Meir that any violation of these security orders, any attempt to go near a border or a foreign embassy, will land him back in prison without trial.

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Like the fictional lieutenant, the 50-year-old Vanunu could well spend the rest of his life at the mercy of a country that he rejected - and whose people despise him - but will not let him go.

Vanunu's peculiar crime was to offend all three of Israel's key unifying creeds - Zionism, Jewish identity and total loyalty to the government on questions of national security.

Although born into a right-wing, Orthodox family of Moroccan immigrants, Vanunu became involved with left-wing and pro-Palestinian causes while studying philosophy as a mature student at Ben-Gurion University.

In 1985, he was laid off from his job as a technician at Israel's top-secret nuclear facility at Dimona and left the country. He ended up in Australia, where he worked at odd jobs in Sydney and committed his second act of disloyalty by embracing Anglicanism.

OCTOBER 13, 1954: Mordechai Vanunu is born in Morocco.1963: Family emigrates to Israel.1971-74: Military service in army.1976-85: Technician at Dimona nuclear reactor centre. Travels in Far East before arriving in London to talk to
The Sunday Times.SEPTEMBER 1986: Disappears.OCTOBER 1986:The Sunday Times publishes his story.NOVEMBER 1986: Israel admits it has him in custody.MARCH 1988: Convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years'
imprisonment.VANUNU ON IMPENDING RELEASE: "I'll be free, I won. The gates and the
locks will be opened. They didn't succeed in breaking me or driving me
crazy."VANUNU ON FUTURE: "I have no interest in fighting the state. I want to live
a normal life, a simple life, as a free man outside of Israel."Source: Guardian

Although most Israelis identify as Jewish by birth rather than religious affiliation, converting to Christianity is seen by secular and religious Israelis alike as a deliberate renunciation of Jewish identity. His parents and most of his 10 siblings have since renounced him.

Vanunu's third and biggest offence came in 1986 when, after a series of half-hearted and at times farcical efforts to tell his story, The Sunday Times newspaper in London published a major article, backed up by photos secretly taken by Vanunu, exposing how Israel had produced a covert nuclear arsenal at the Dimona plant.

Vanunu's supporters say it was primarily his principled opposition to nuclear weapons that made him leak the story. But the fact that he was due to obtain $US100,000 ($A135,000) from a related book and serialisation deal made him doubly odious in Israeli eyes.

Vanunu did not receive the money or even see his story in print. Before The Sunday Times could publish the article, an American Jewish woman working for Mossad, Israel's secret service, lured him from London to Rome, where he was kidnapped and smuggled on board a disguised Israeli naval vessel.

When he was spotted again two months later, being hustled out of an Israeli court room, he revealed his plight to the world by writing the details of his abduction on the palm of his hand and holding it up towards press photographers.

A secret trial convicted him of treason and espionage, even though he had made no attempt to provide his secrets to foreign or hostile powers.

Vanunu spent most of the next 12 years in strict, solitary confinement - a term that made the Guinness World Records - ostensibly on security grounds. His mail was heavily censored and visits severely restricted. An attempt by an elderly American couple to gain him US citizenship by adopting him failed when it emerged that adopted children over the age of 16 were not eligible.

It emerged last month that Vanunu had written to the Israeli Interior Ministry formally applying to renounce his Israeli citizenship - a request that is not likely to be granted.

It is still not entirely certain that Vanunu will even be allowed to leave Ashkelon prison on Wednesday. With the backing of Israel's spy chiefs, the Attorney-General applied to have him detained without trial following the expiry of his sentence, arguing that Vanunu still had nuclear secrets that could damage Israel.

Although the courts rejected this application, Vanunu might yet find himself back in jail if he breaches the Government's restrictions on his freedom or perhaps even if he refuses to put his signature to them.

His supporters from Israel and abroad say that after 18 years, Vanunu, a junior employee of the nuclear plant, has no more secrets to reveal. They maintain that the Israeli Government is really concerned about avoiding any unwelcome attention on its harsh treatment of a man they regard as a political dissident and avoiding publicity over its covert possession of weapons of mass destruction.

They point to the case of Vanunu's brother Meir, who was also charged with security offences for revealing details of his brother's abduction at a press conference after his trial. Meir Vanunu subsequently fled Israel and obtained legal asylum in Australia, where he still lives for most of the time. Now an Australian citizen, he did not visit Israel again until he received guarantees that he no longer faced prosecution.

Having campaigned tirelessly for his brother's release, the younger Vanunu will be there next Wednesday when - or if - his brother is released into his new, less restrictive form of confinement. So will dozens of foreign and Israeli supporters, including the British actress Susannah York and Northern Irish Nobel peace prizewinner Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Also among the welcoming committee will be Father David Smith, the Sydney pastor who befriended Vanunu and oversaw his conversion to Anglicanism.

"I feel very emotional about it. I'm extremely hopeful that he will be allowed out and that he'll be safe," Smith said in Tel Aviv this week.

"I'm worried about his safety here. I think there are a lot of people who'd like to do him in. I think he might be a lightning rod for a lot of people on the right wing."

In recent years, Vanunu has expressed a wish to go to America on his release, although before that he did speak of a return to Australia.

"In the end he'd be a lot safer in Australia than anywhere else," said Smith.